In the manufacture of electronics, semiconductor products such as integrated circuit (“IC”) dies or chips are prepared. These semiconductor products are to be accommodated in a package and need to be electrically connectable to components outside the package. For this purpose, a plurality of semiconductor products is first mounted on lead frames in a die bonding process. Next, each semiconductor product is electrically connected to the associated lead frame in a wirebonding process before packaging the semiconductor product. In the wirebonding process, bond pads on one or more surfaces of each semiconductor product are electrically and mechanically connected to leads of the associated lead frame by thin metallic wires, using a wirebonding tool.
Increased miniaturization of components, greater packaging density of integrated circuits (“ICs”), higher performance, and lower cost are ongoing goals of the computer industry. Semiconductor package structures continue to advance toward miniaturization, to increase the density of the components that are packaged therein while decreasing the sizes of the products that are made therefrom. This is in response to continually increasing demands on information and communication products for ever-reduced sizes, thicknesses, and costs, along with ever-increasing performance.
These increasing requirements for miniaturization are particularly noteworthy, for example, in portable information and communication devices such as cellular phones, hands-free cellular phone headsets, personal data assistants (“PDA's”), camcorders, notebook computers, and so forth. All of these devices continue to be made smaller and thinner to improve their portability. Accordingly, large-scale IC (“LSI”) packages that are incorporated into these devices are required to be made smaller and thinner. The package configurations that house and protect LSI require them to be made smaller and thinner as well.
Different challenges arise from increased functionality integration and miniaturization. For example, many semiconductor (or “chip”) packages having increased functionality may be made smaller but may be required to provide a large number of inputs/outputs (“I/Os”), many of which may be connected to reference sources such as digital ground, analog ground, digital supply voltage, analog supply voltage, reference voltage and so forth. Many applications require the reference sources to be electrically isolated to provide electrical performance. Numerous package approaches include mechanical and chemical means to isolate the reference sources.
Thus, a need still remains for an integrated circuit packaging system including high I/O density, low cost, and improved reliability. In view of the ever-increasing need to increase density of integrated circuits and particularly portable electronic products, it is increasingly critical that answers be found to these problems. In view of the ever-increasing commercial competitive pressures, along with growing consumer expectations and the diminishing opportunities for meaningful product differentiation in the marketplace, it is critical that answers be found for these problems. Additionally, the need to reduce costs, improve efficiencies and performance, and meet competitive pressures adds an even greater urgency to the critical necessity for finding answers to these problems.
Solutions to these problems have been long sought but prior developments have not taught or suggested any solutions and, thus, solutions to these problems have long eluded those skilled in the art.